Barack Obama in 2008: His foreign policy achievements over the past eight years are overshadowed by his failure on Syria (Center for American Progress CC BY-SA 2.0)


Barack Obama no doubt views his foreign policy legacy as a list of successes. He disentangled the US from the imbroglio of Iraq. He turned the page with Cuba. And he sealed the nuclear deal with Iran. Yet this list of seemingly impressive achievements — many of which, like the Iran deal, may yet prove a boomerang for Obama and his place in history — is overshadowed by his complete paralysis over Syria.

In place of a policy, Obama has offered a litany of empty words and platitudes without any real commitment to solve Syria’s civil war and defend the West’s vital interests in the region. His words have only made matters worse, laying bare the stark contrast between the President’s knack for flowery rhetoric and his actions.

In August 2011 Obama made his Syria policy clear. “The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way,” he said in a written statement. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”

These were grave words, pronounced by a President who had just helped another Arab insurgency topple a tyrant in Libya. At a relatively small cost, with no troops committed to ground operations, and the legal trappings of a multinational coalition backed by a UN Security Council resolution, Obama felt confident enough to warn Assad that his time was also coming. The international community expected action to follow. But it did not.

Obama revisited this issue in a moving speech delivered at the US Holocaust Museum in April 2012. Not only did he reaffirm America’s commitment to Assad’s removal but he promised to step up US action to achieve the goal.

“We will keep increasing the pressure,” he said, “with a diplomatic effort to further isolate Assad and his regime, so that those who stick with Assad know that they are making a losing bet.” But Assad stayed on and America did nothing to change that.

The President has always been fond of reminding his global audiences that those who choose not to join him are on the losing side. They are on the wrong side of history. They are in the wrong century. They bet on the wrong horse. And thus he marches on, confident that his words, exuding as they do a certitude of destiny, need not be followed by actions.